Racial Justice Demands Affirmative Action

By Sherrilyn A. Ifill

Aug. 2, 2017

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CreditCreditTamir Kalifa for The New York Times

President Trump’s Justice Department has hardly been worthy of its name. It has retreated from meaningful police reform, argued on behalf of state laws that suppress minority voting rights, directed prosecutors to seek harsh sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, and extended the federal government’s power to seize the property of innocent Americans.

Each of these steps disproportionately and systematically burdens people of color, denying them their constitutional rights and widening the racial divides that this country has struggled for so long to close.

The Justice Department reportedly plans to open a new front in its assault on civil rights: higher education. According to a stunning document obtained by The New York Times, the department is seeking lawyers to oppose “intentional race-based discrimination” in college admissions.

This is a signal that the administration could be preparing to attack affirmative action, although the Justice Department denies this is the case. If this tactic were to succeed, it would be a severe blow to racial justice.

Affirmative action has proved to be one of the most effective tools for expanding opportunity and promoting diversity for students of color. Race-conscious admissions policies have made campuses across the country more representative of our society. In doing so, they have helped remedy inequality created by centuries of discrimination.

Affirmative action has also become a symbol, maybe the most powerful symbol for some whites, of African-American advancement. It is a commitment to opening spaces once reserved for whites, and a reordering of power in ways that value African-American, Asian, Native American and Latino lives, voices and demands. Although it has been relentlessly attacked over the past 40 years, affirmative action has undermined the racial exclusivity of our nation’s universities.

If anything, we need to open those avenues wider, not close them. Although the progress we have made in recent decades is undeniable, it is fragile and incomplete; countless African-American, Native American, Asian and Latino students are still excluded from quality education at all levels. Undoing affirmative action now would reverse the gains we have made and dim the prospects for greater progress.

That would be a devastating outcome, not only for Americans of color but also for the entire nation. We have long known that diverse student bodies are in everyone’s interest. College campuses are important engines of integration because they help break down racial barriers that cause distrust.

Learning with and from people of different backgrounds allows students to understand a wide range of perspectives, a skill essential for democratic citizenship. And studying in diverse settings prepares our young people to lead our businesses, our military and our government in an increasingly globalized world.

Affirmative action is not just sound public policy, however. It’s also the law of the land, and the judiciary has left no doubt what the law is. In four decades, the Supreme Court has validated affirmative action three times. Just last year, in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the court reaffirmed that “a university may institute a race-conscious admissions program as a means of obtaining the educational benefits that flow from student body diversity.” (In Fisher, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund played a key role litigating on behalf of the University of Texas’ Black Student Alliance and its African-American alumni.)

All of this appears to mean very little to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who appears determined to use the Justice Department to undermine the ideal of equal justice he is sworn to uphold. As is the case with other actions this department has taken, its goal on affirmative action appears to be the systematic marginalization of Americans of color. In fact, the only place the Trump administration seems to welcome minority representation is in prisons. The administration has consistently moved to make our courts, our voting rolls and now our classrooms more reflective of its own identity rather than the diversity of this nation.

It is frustrating that the battle to protect affirmative action eats resources and time needed for other, urgent racial justice demands. But the relentless fixation on affirmative action by those who wish to return us to a time of racial exclusion tells us that what is really at stake is the transformation of our country. We must resist every effort by the Trump administration to compel American institutions to conform to its failed vision of our country.